When we share our experiences from many different countries we find that in one sense there is not a single "world", but that the situations in which Christians are involved are many and varied, and that the reality with which they must deal and to which they must witness takes many different forms with different problems and different opportunities. As in the Book of Revelation, the Spirit says something different to each church. There is no one exclusive way to worship, there is no one form of evangelism, there is no one challenge given to all the churches. This does not, however, lead to confusion: in a real, if mysterious, way the variety of the Spirit's words to the churches becomes a coinage with a wide currency, assuming additional values. When one church hears what God is saying to it about its life, others may through that situation hear a word which helps them in theirs to ponder the fruitfulness of the word of the Lord.

Are there yet elements which distinguish our varied situations in today's world from those of earlier worlds? All Christians would agree that there is some continuity between the first century and the 20th, and all would agree that there are significant differences, but they differ in the extent to which they emphasize the continuity - the sameness of the human predicament in every age - or the difference - the radical novelty of today's world. It may be said that atheism is the characteristic of today's world, as against the many Gods of ancient Athens. Yet there is much superstition in today's world, and there was atheism in the ancient world. It may be said that people today are not perturbed about salvation and grace; yet they do feel determined by anonymous forces, and they seek after a liberation which the Christian believes only God can give. There is in today's world a nihilism which denies or relativizes all values, and also a fanaticism which absolutizes particular values.

What may be common to the varied situations in today's world is the awareness of change. This is not to say that changes have not occurred in other epochs but that today it is experienced as the very element in which we live. Traditional societies, and earlier European society, thought in terms of a fixed and static order, changes being either ignored or interpreted in such a way as not to disrupt that order. Today's world thinks in dynamic categories. To translate our worship and our witness from the categories and images of the fixed and static order into more dynamic ways of thought may be to recover some biblical insights which were opaque to earlier ways of thinking.

If worship is seen, in the light of Romans 12.1, as the total response of the Christian to the transforming mercy of God in Jesus Christ, then we can make no division between worship and life, worship and witness. We may see a narrower and a broader sense of worship; one in which we are like children in the presence of their father, rejoicing, at play, and the other in which we share actively with Christ in the sufferings and struggles of the world. But both are aspects of the one worship. In the light of this, these six things can be said about worship.

The life of worship is marked by joy

While we ought never to forget the cross, we worship a risen Lord. Worship celebrates the ever-new event of Easter. When in worship the Christian family can speak simply, naturally and joyfully of what God has done, worship has the power to draw believers into participation.

The church grieves when worship is deficient

Worship that is based on the law and not on the gospel may be experienced as a joyless duty. Even worship that seeks to be "modern" and experimental may be imposed in such a way that it is accepted as a duty, and does not become a natural expression of the congregation's life. But much worse, worship may be sinfully unrelated to the gospel of reconciliation. When the worshipping congregation unrepentantly reflects the divisions and bondage of the world, when material wealth and the master-servant relationship prevent the church from worshipping in unity, our worship is a negative witness, which denies the gospel. When our protestations of love in worship do not involve the activity of being true friends to each other and true friends to the world, our worship is a negative witness.

Authentic worship is rooted in personal relationships of love

No one can love God who does not love his brother. When we go through acts of worship, we need to enjoy true friendship with each other and at the same time act as true friends to the world. The Christian who hates or resents the non-Christian does not have inner freedom in worship. Personal relationships are crucial to authenticity in worship. The western, and especially the Reformed tradition has tended to intellectualize and verbalize worship, and to split the intellectual off from the affective and the active aspects of life, which then become prone to sentimentality and to legalism. A personal integrity, warmth and naturalness are the groundwork of authentic worship and witness. The goodness and virtue of the adherent of another religion, or the warmth, spontaneity and caring of the uncommitted young today can rebuke the church and remind us that the distinction between those who are "inside" and those who are "outside" is not easy to draw if we take seriously that "whoever dwells in love is dwelling in God and God in him."

The common experiences of birth, marriage and death are priceless opportunities for liturgical evangelism

Churches in both majority and minority situations witness to the readiness with which the gospel is heard at the high-points of human experience. Creation and redemption are united in Jesus Christ. Thus both in a nominally Christian society such as Britain or America, and in non-Christian communities like those in Communist and Muslim countries, a pastoral ministry has opportunities for witness.

A living church is capable of costly witness

There are situations in which to worship at all is to make a costly witness. There are many Christians today whose belief is a sacrificial one, who incur material and social penalties by choosing Jesus Christ. Though disadvantaged in so many ways themselves, they yet pursue a social diakonia and have learnt the delicate art of witnessing to civic authorities. From them others may learn that in a world where it seems that some people are so formed and conditioned by the multicultural pluralism of today's societies that they are incapable of hearing and understanding the gospel, the witness may sometimes be made most powerfully not in words but in the simple integrity of a life that is a response to grace.

A new day is dawning for the church's united praise of the glory of God

The witness of Christians who begin to work together across the denominational lines in ecumenical parishes is that ecumenicity can be a thrilling and liberating reality. The same is true of ministers, who, venturing beyond the ancient partitions of Rome, Geneva and Canterbury, begin to minister to one another. The fact that in so many local situations Christians are being led to move ahead of the official churches into new relationships of trust and understanding gives assurance of the gracious patience of the Lord to his church. As we are set free to be true friends to one another we are freed also to be true friends to the world, to share without constraint the joy of those who can view the human future with hope because they have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.